About half approve of Trump conviction: Survey

Americans are more likely to approve than disapprove of former President Trump’s guilty verdict in the New York criminal case, according to a new poll conducted just more than a week after the historic conviction.  

About half (48 percent) of surveyed Americans say they approve of Trump’s conviction, while 29 percent say they disapprove, and 21 percent say they neither approve nor disapprove, in the Associated Press/NORC survey released Wednesday.

The poll — conducted June 7-10, 2024 — came after a 12-person jury on May 30 found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of a broader conspiracy to buy the silence of people with potentially damaging information about then-candidate Trump ahead of the 2016 presidential election. One $130,000 payment went to a porn actor, Stormy Daniels, who testified about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump, which he denies.

Interviewers asked U.S. adults about the verdict in the case, describing it as a “felony conviction in New York for falsifying business documents to cover up a hush money payment to a woman who said he had an affair with her.”

There is a significant partisan split in the way Americans view the case, although Republicans are more likely to approve of the conviction than Democrats are to disapprove.

Among surveyed Republicans, 61 percent disapprove, 15 percent approve, and 22 percent select neither option. Among surveyed Democrats, 85 percent approve, 5 percent disapprove, and 8 percent say neither.

The survey is consistent with other recent polls suggesting independents are tuning out news coverage of the New York case. Independents in the survey are more likely to say they neither approve nor disapprove (48 percent), although more approve (32 percent) than disapprove (18 percent).

Eighty percent of surveyed Americans say they have heard or read “a lot” (43 percent) or “some” (37 percent) about the case, while 69 percent of surveyed independents say the same, including 29 percent who say “a lot” and 40 percent who say “some.”

Only 20 percent of Americans in the survey say they have heard “only a little” (16 percent) or “nothing at all” (4 percent) about the case, while 31 percent of independents say the same, including 26 percent who say “only a little” and 5 percent who say “nothing at all.”

The Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey included interviews with 1,115 U.S. adults. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.